Unplanned Creativity Quotes

I started teaching myself guitar because I loved singing so much. Then one day kind of out of the blue I found I was writing a song. It just happened organically.

It all must start with an inspired, spontaneous idea.

A lot of it's experimental, spontaneous. It's about knocking about in the studio and bumping into things.

I don't freestyle, but when I'm writing and thinking, sometimes things pop up - that's basically a freestyle.

When I write, I don't know what is going to emerge. I begin in a condition of complete unknowing, an utter nakedness of concept or goal. A word appears, another word appears, an image. It is a moving into mystery.

You want accuracy, but not representation. If you know how to make the figuration, it doesn't work. Anything you can make, you make by accident. In painting, you have to know what you do, not how, when you do it.

I willingly trust myself to chance. I let my thoughts wander, I digress, not only sitting at my work, but all day long, all night even. It often happens that a sentence suddenly runs through my head before I go to bed, or when I am unable to sleep, and I get up again and write it down.

The best ideas come unexpectedly from a conversation or a common activity like watering the garden. These can get lost or slip away if not acted on when they occur.

'Flying In A Blue Dream' was quite automatic. I was working on another song, and I took a break and picked up my acoustic guitar, tuned it strangely, and instantly wrote the tune. It's funny how you can struggle with one piece and write a better one in a minute. Usually, when things come easy, it means it's good.

You have to follow where the poem leads. And it will surprise you. It will say things you didn't expect to say. And you look at the poem and you realize, 'That is truly what I felt.' That is truly what I saw.

It's never like, 'Now I'm going to sit down and write this or that kind of song.' The melodies may show up in the car, in the shower.

I just do these 'Sleep' type tracks when the situation presents itself. I never set out to do them, like wait all day until I'm really tired or something. Gotta come natural.

I always have my setlist planned out, but the best moments are when the energy of the crowd just gets your mind working and you are able to come up with new tags for jokes and just riff off things in the room.

I never know when I sit down, just what I am going to write. I make no plan; it just comes, and I don't know where it comes from.

We were so limited on time for 'No Burden' that we didn't get to overthink anything. There was no going for the perfect take, or even going for three takes. It was kind of nice because what you're hearing is our first impulse.

I think that the best things come from thought, without thinking. I think that's the smartest use of the intelligence that we all have.

A deliberate plan is not always necessary for the highest art; it emerges.

It's very bad to write a novel by act of will. I can do a book of nonfiction work that way - just sign the contract and do the book because, provided the topic has some meaning for me, I know I can do it. But a novel is different. A novel is more like falling in love. You don't say, 'I'm going to fall in love next Tuesday, I'm going to begin my novel.' The novel has to come to you. It has to feel just like love.

I've never been a heavy practitioner of the method or, at least, with any specific intent; I'm kind of an impulse-based person. Like, I'm sort of waiting for something to happen that I'm not expecting, and I kind of want to jump on that train of emotion, whatever it is, both from myself or from the other actor.

I'm not very aware of styles. We never talk about styles before we start shooting, or even during shooting, because I think the film will bring you there.

The way plays happen, at least with me, it's spontaneous combustion of things you've had in your head.

I find lyrics can come at any time during the day, as can music.

Musically, I have little ambition. The only real ambition I have is to make music and do music whenever I feel like it, without any real ambition or planning.

I guess I always have sort of general ideas, but the best stuff would be the stuff that comes to you in the moment, always.

I usually just have ideas when I have them.